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Eliza Leslie, by Thomas Sully, 1844.
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Oil on canvas of a woman seated, wearing a bonnet, and holding a folder.

Credit: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Pennsylvania Academy Purchase

Expanding numbers of middle-class women in the early 1800s produced opportunities for women writers, including Philadelphian Eliza Leslie (1787 – 1858), who like her peers wrote under a pseudonym in conformity with established conventions of female modesty.  After achieving success publishing one of the nation’s first popular cookbook, Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats (1828) and as a writer of children’s books and articles for women’s magazine, Leslie in 1831 became one of the first American women authors to write under her own name.  In the 1840s and 1850s, "Miss Leslie" wrote popular books on housekeeping and etiquette, including Miss Leslie's Behavior Book (1834), The Lady's Receipt-Book: A Useful Companion for Large or Small Families (1847), andMiss Leslie's Directions for Cookery (1851).

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